What is the Critical Race Theory?

[Dill]

(05-17-2021, 01:20 PM)Crazyjdawg Wrote: The classic way to explain CRT is by discussing how black people are still affected by slavery and Jim Crow today. You could say "there are currently no laws on the books that are objectively racist" and you'd technically be correct. What CRT would say is the way in which we treat black people in this country is reflected in how the laws of this country are administered.

An excellent and trustworthy post.

An additional point to the bolded--since the 14th Amendment, laws cannot be written to explicitly power one race over another.

But that did not prevent the "separate but equal" principle from informing law for 70 years. 

While there may be no "objectively racist" laws, in the sense they name a race for harm, segregationists and their descendants have worked very hard to frame laws which do such harm without mention of race. The current push to "secure the vote" would be one example. One can reduce the number of polling places in an "urban" district, for example, without mentioning race at all. And people who object to this can be called "real" racists, because they are making a neutral law into a race issue and thereby "creating divisions." 

(05-17-2021, 01:20 PM)Crazyjdawg Wrote: Then there is the question of generational wealth. Why is it that black people are, as a race, vastly more poor than white people in this country? A Critical Race Theorist would argue that, for generations, black people were stripped of the ability to own land and, during slavery, were actually controlled and had their labor converted into wealth for their masters rather than themselves. Even after slavery was banned and black people's civil rights were given back, there was still redlining, a practice that prevented black people from getting loans in more affluent areas even when they were qualified for such a loan. This sectioned off the more affluent areas from black people and, some would argue, created "ghettos" as we know them in this country. All of these policies, and their after effects, prevented black people from benefitting from their parents' and grandparents' wealth, thus letting them fall behind more and more as the generations went on.

Imagine you and your friends were playing Monopoly, but for 200 consecutive turns, you were not allowed to buy any property you landed on and, when you crossed go, your money was sent to the community bank rather than your own bank account. Then, at the end of the 200 turns, those rules were reversed and you were allowed to buy property and get your pass go money, but by that time, your opponent had already bought up the majority of the properties and had been collecting their go money this entire time.

Love the Monopoly example. I would also add that poor schooling and lack of access to higher ed for a long time played a role in reducing/checking Black human capital.

Final note: CRT isn't limited to addressing systemic racism in the U.S. The global colonization controlled by Europeans for five centuries was also predicated upon evolving, multiple versions of white supremacy. Understanding this a key to understanding international conflict and power imbalances in the post-colonial era as well as the colonial. U.S immigration policy, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the aftermath of Apartheid in South Africa--all lend themselves to illumination via the concept of "settler colonialism" predicated upon the natural right of White Europeans to indigenous people's lands. (This doesn't mean that only white ever aggressors engage in settler colonialism, though.)